Here are the boards I’ve made, the stories of their creation, the people that they honor, and the lessons learned along the way.
Banana Peel Boards:
- X1 – Beautiful Ballard
- X2 – Daring Dawson
- X3 – El Jefe Jeffro
- X4 – Sensei Sebastian
- X5 – Motor Olsen
- X6 – Kev Bomb
- X7 – Oh Bey Bee!
- X8 – Frisabel
- X9 – Flying Phil
- X10 – Seaborn Sibborn
I can’t explain the joy I feel in making a board. It’s almost like the joy I feel while slipping between the sky and the sea powered by the sun’s energy that’s come to life in the wind.
When you are feeling the shape of the board, you are feeling the shape of the water as it flows across it, creating that shape gives you an extra level of intimacy with the waves. Somehow you just feel it more by knowing the decisions (and sometimes dark secrets) that went into a board.
Banana Peel Boards have some quirks that are worth explaining. First off, I’m learning. I’ve been around enough to know that I will always be learning but at this time I’m really learning. I’ve watched many interviews with surfboard shapers and the old timers all say that you need to make at least twenty boards before you know what you’re doing. So I’ve got a ways to go. For the time being, it’s fun to come across a problem or a new technique and just try a thing, hold your breath, and see what happens. Sometimes mistakes are made, but a mistake is a failure only if you don’t learn something from it. So you can say I’ve had some catastrophic successes.
Banana Peel Boards are named after PNW local kiteboarders and are inscribed with words of power in the form of a haiku about that person. I’m going in roughly chronological order of the folks who had major impacts on my development as a kiteboarder. There are a lot of folks to honor in that way and I’m meeting them faster than I can make boards so I have my work cut out for me. I call the haiku the “Handle Haiku” since they are located right above the handle. I find it comforting to absorb a little poem about a friend in the moment before water starting.
Ok, so purists will note that sometimes I’m off by a syllable or two. Yep, as in life, sometimes I’m a little off.
Each board has a sound track. I like to think that while the epoxy is curing on a board that the sound waves of the music that’s playing will leave their mark in the board forever. Some day, alien archaeologists will discover the sound waves trapped in resin and develop a device to play back kiteboards. The surf track player will become the rage of retro alien teens to the dismay and frustration of their parental units. Well, that’s the theory anyway.
Making things by hand means that they are not machine perfect. So my boards have birthmarks. I do get better each time but I have come to enjoy the learning experience of correcting mistakes. I’ve also learned that sometimes it will cause more harm to try to correct a minor thing than to leave it alone. My wife knows that if she needs to clone me she can retrieve the odd stray hair that I missed plucking out of the epoxy. I only hope she doesn’t cross that with the occasional sacrificial bug.
Finally, Banana Peel Boards are made to look like bananas. Well, that was the intent at least. Up until the Motor Olsen, pretty much nobody saw my boards and said, “Hey! That’s a Banana!”. What folks did seem to think was that I’m a big fan of Brazil. I totally dig Brazil, that much is true, and for a brief shining moment, I considered renaming my imaginary board company to the “Brazilian Board Company” but this presented a few problems. Number one, I’m not from Brazil. Number two, I’m not located in Brazil. And number three, the slogan that popped to mind for the Brazilian Board Company was “Ride a Brazilian!” which is not the the type of search I wanted folks to do to find me. So instead, while all of my boards will carry the spirit of the banana in them, I’m not planning on holding fast to this rule.